Scientists say 'inflation' led to massive expansion.

But I'm confused, and I'm hoping a science-savvy reader out there can fill me in. The story says

By the faint cosmic glow of the oldest known light, physicists say they have found evidence that the universe grew to astounding proportions in less than the blink of an eye. In that trillionth of a second after the big bang, the universe expanded from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space through a process known as inflation.

Now, wikipedia says that the speed of light is roughly 300,000 km per second, or 0.003 meters per trillionth of a second. In the time of the inflation, then, light would travel only 0.003 meters yet the universe grew to the size of observable space so the universe is expanding much faster than the speed of light. How is it possible that we could observe a faint cosmic glow? Would it not be traveling away from us at a faster rate than the light would be traveling back to us to observe it?

If you drive your car 70 mph and pass point A, wait a second, then throw a baseball 50mph out the back window, the baseball will never return to point A.

And, my faint grasp of relatively theory is that something traveling near the speed of light doesn't experience time. If the universe was expanding so much faster than light, wouldn't the particles on the expanding edge still retain the same properties as the first marble? They wouldn't age at all, no?

What am I missing here? Besides even a bachelor's degree in science.